Chance (The Walking Dead)
by DissolveMe
Summary: A normal run, and a normal day. When Daryl Dixon stumbles across a girl in a rundown café he doesn't expect her to amount to much, but Rick sees promise in her. They both find that they get more than they originally bargained for.
1. Chapter 1

"How many Walkers have you killed?"

"Eighteen."

"How many people have you killed?"

"Two."

"Why?"

"I had a younger brother when this all started, and someone tried to take him from me," there was a pause after she said this, and she looked away from the man holding the crossbow. "The second I killed because he tried to kill me."

Daryl pursed his lips together before offering the girl a hand, "Do you want to come with me? We got shelter. There's food and people, too." His accent was thick and his words were promising to the ears of someone who had been on the road for months.

She nodded slowly and took his hand, allowing him to support the majority of her weight as he helped her to her feet. After brushing her hands off on her ripped jeans she picked up her small backpack and shrugged it onto her shoulder. "I'm Lenore, by the way." She finally introduced herself, clearing her throat softly after doing so.

"Daryl Dixon." The man replied and pointed his arrowshot towards the ground seeing that Lenore wasn't a threat. He had been scouting a small town about fifteen miles out from the prison when he stumbled across her holed up in what looked like a rundown café. Down to her last can of beans she was thin and her face was covered in a layer of grime – her hair greasy from where she hadn't been able to wash it. Daryl thought she could be pretty underneath the layer of filth that covered her with her bright hazel eyes.

"Pleasure to meet you, Dixon," she returned and followed him out of the café. Lenore squinted her eyes when she stepped out into the sunlight and adjusted the straps of her backpack. "I've scouted this town twice already. If there was anything else here to salvage I would have found it by now." She then added, because she didn't want to waste any more time here than what she already had.

"Then why'd you stay?" Daryl asked and poked his head around the corner to make sure there weren't any Walkers lingering in the street. There wasn't.

Lenore's eyebrows furrowed together as she followed after the man, her eyes taking in the set of wings on the back of his vest. His shoulders were broad and his arms muscular – not surprising considering the fact he was a bowman. "It's how I survive," the woman replied with a shrug although he wasn't currently looking at her. "There's safety in numbers when you're on the road, but when you're alone you find that it's easier to find a place and hole up there until there's nothing left to take."

Daryl nodded before securing his crossbow onto his back and motioned to his motorcycle. "You ready to take a ride, Sunshine?" he asked her with a smirk in his voice. He had only seen a handful of Walkers since leaving the prison and the afternoon was sunny and warm, the perfect weather for taking a ride. Without waiting for her answer he swung one leg over the bike that had once belonged to his brother, the nicest thing the oldest Dixon brother had ever owned, and turned it on.

Lenore couldn't remember the last time she had been on a motorcycle, and she was weary as she got on behind the man. "Do I have a choice?" she asked, hesitantly wrapping her arms around his midsection so that she would have a little more security.

"Not unless you wanna walk." And with that, he took off.


	2. Chapter 2

The first thing Lenore did when she arrived at the prison was take a shower. She scrubbed her skin until there wasn't a trace of grim left on her pale skin and washed her hair a total of three times to ensure that there wasn't a way it could possibly feel greasy when she got out. When she did finish she dressed in a pair of skinny jeans and tugged on a clean top, lacing up her black combat boots before heading back to the cell that Daryl told her to meet him at when she had finished up in the bathrooms.

Daryl had been sitting on the bottom bunk in his cell, cleaning his arrows when the sound of footsteps filled his eardrums. Looking up from the task at hand he was greeted by the clean face of Lenore and he blinked several times because she was truly beautiful without the dirt and blood that had been there before. Setting his bow aside he stood from where he had been sitting and slid his vest back on. "Come on, I'm gonna take you to meet Rick. See what cell block he wants me to put ya in." Daryl stepped past the woman and she tightened her grip on her backpack, strands of wet hair clinging to her skin.

"Who's Rick?" Lenore asked as she followed him out of the cell block and into the prison yard. A handful of people were lining up to get something to eat and a few of them cast her a glance as she and Daryl walked past.

"He's the man that got us here," Daryl replied simply, nodding to Glenn and Maggie from where they sat at one of the tables. A lot of things could be said about Rick Grimes – a lot of things that made up his character, but he remained quiet about those things. Lenore would figure them out soon enough for herself, anyways.

"So he's the one in charge?" she asked somewhat hesitantly, because she didn't want to make assumptions. Since the world had gone to shit she had stopped looking at people in that type of sense. There were no criminals and there were no men who enforced the law, nor were there niggers or pieces of white trash. Labels had been stripped away. There was only light and dark meat now.

"Something like that." He murmured underneath his breath as the two made their way down the small incline of hill and towards the garden where he could see Rick bent over in the tomato vines. He whistled to get the sheriff's attention and watched as he straightened up, wiping the dirt away from his hands on his jeans. When he and Lenore were within talking distance he jerked his head over towards the girl before folding his arms across his chest. "This is Lenore. I found her in that town I was out scoutin' today."

Rick looked Lenore over, his eyebrows furrowing together as she did so. The girl couldn't have been a day over eighteen and she had a certain look to her that suggested she was wise beyond her years. Of course, he didn't see how anyone couldn't have lost their innocence when the world had become an embodiment of Hell itself. Clearing those thoughts from his mind he rested one hand on his hip and extended the other to her. "It's nice to meet you, I'm Rick Grimes."

Lenore took his hand and shook it, nodding. "It's nice to meet someone who isn't dead," she returned with a weak smile that didn't reach her eyes. When she dropped her hand back to her side she looked between Rick and Daryl, the two men seeming to be having a silent discussion amongst themselves. A moment later Daryl turned his gaze to her.

"I wanted to know what block you want her in." Daryl explained, to which Rick replied with a long pause of silence. The sheriff studied the young woman before nodding to himself and returning his attention to the weeds that had overtaken the tomato plants.

"Leave her here with me, Daryl. I'll decided what cell block to send her to when I'm finished up here." Rick decided, pulling the worn leather gloves from his hands as he did so. He only looked up when Daryl nodded and turned on his heel before making his way back to the prison. When the other man was out of sight he directed his attention back to Lenore and drew his lower lip between his teeth. Daryl didn't see much promise in the girl or else he wouldn't have come and asked him what cell block he should put Lenore in, but Rick saw potential. If she was here alone then she must have been found that way and if someone like her could survive on her own then there had to be something she was doing right.

"Do you know anything about gardens?" Rick finally spoke, motioning to the plants as he did so. "I could use some help getting up the weeds."

Lenore slowly nodded, because she wasn't sure what kind of ice she was walking on. This prison took people in based on three simple questions, but what happened if they didn't prove their usefulness in some form or fashion? Deciding that she rather not find out she sat her backpack on the ground before using a worn ponytail holder to pull her waist-length hair back. "I don't have a green thumb, but I can handle some weeds." She almost felt like chuckling, but the sound died in her throat before her lips even parted a second time.

Rick offered her the tilt of his lips and pointed to the other row of tomatoes before bending back over and focusing on a rather stubborn weed. "So who are you, Lenore?" he asked as a way to make conversation. The majority of people at the prison he knew fairly well, and the rest he knew enough about that he wasn't worried about them being around his family. Her, however, he knew nothing about other than the fact she had been deemed fit to join their group.

Lenore walked around to the other row and got to her knees where she began to tug on the weeds, being careful not to accidently grab a vine as she did so. "Before the apocalypse decided to happen?" she asked rhetorically, poking through the vines to make sure she didn't miss any weeds as she did so. "A special effects makeup artist in Atlanta. Worried about where I was going to get next month's rent and making sure my kid brother had the things that he needed." She told him honestly, her gaze softening as she spoke of her brother. "Now? I actively try to avoid becoming a human Happy Meal and surviving along the way."

Rick would have laughed at Lenore's joke had he not gotten caught up on what she said about having a kid brother. After everything turned bad everyone had lost someone, and it was becoming such a common occurrence that people were beginning to no longer bat an eye. For whatever reason it was, he felt the need to ask her about him. Besides – you could tell a lot about someone by the way they treated family.

"What was his name?"

Lenore was quiet for a moment, moving down the row a ways before she answered. "Carl."

Rick visibly stiffened when she said this, and he turned his head to the side so that he could catch a glimpse of her through the vines. She was frowning and her eyes seemed almost dead, her hands slightly trembling as she tugged on the weeds. He decided that now wouldn't be the time to tell her that his son was also named Carl, and a part of him wondered if the boys had been the same age. If they had liked the same things or if he had blue eyes like his boy, or the same hazel hue that Lenore's were.

Licking his lips, Rick bowed his head. "I'm sorry," he murmured so softly he wasn't sure that she would have been able to hear him. Whether she did or didn't, she didn't respond to him and went on down the row and tugged up the weeds in silence, throwing them away from the garden when she had a small pile of them collected. He had her help him hoe between the rows and feed the pigs before they finished up, and was about to start up the hill and head back into the prison when she very quietly spoke up.

"Don't be sorry," she told him, tugging the ponytail holder out of her hair as she did so. "He was everything to me but I wouldn't take him back if I could. Carl was sick when it happened, and he was waiting to have heart surgery when they began evacuating the hospitals. An EMT came to get him, but he was in so much pain… I-I knew that he wouldn't make it if he didn't have the surgery, so I didn't let them take him. I kept telling myself that he had a morphine drip to ease the pain and that it was going to be okay, and two hours later I didn't have a brother anymore." She tilted her head back and looked up towards the sky as she did so. "Now I tell myself that he went out the way we all ought to have. He didn't know what happened to world, and none of those ugly bastards ever laid a hand on him."

Rick stood still for a long while, letting her words sink in as he did so. When he turned his back to her and started back up the hill the only thing he said was: "Get your bag. You're staying in my block."


	3. Chapter 3

When Lenore and Rick got back to his cell block, she was able to feel several sets of eyes on her. There was a black women with dreads who passed the two of them, and cast her a single glance before lifting an eyebrow and continuing on. There was also a blonde girl who wasn't much younger than her hugging a baby against her hip, to which she looked over to Rick for in silent question.

"That was Michonne," he said, looking back towards the black woman. He continued walking down the length of cells before stopping in front of one that didn't have a sheet hanging in the doorway and was empty save for a set of bunk beds and a sink. "The blonde was Beth, and the baby is my daughter Judith." He explained simply, motioning for her to step into the cell.

Lenore didn't ask about where Judith's mother was or make a remark regarding the fact that it completely astounded her that a baby was alive when the majority of the population was flesh hungry. Instead she carefully stepped around Rick and into the cell where she dropped her bag onto the bottom bunk where she sat down next to it. "She's adorable," she finally said, because that was something she had told people when they introduced her to their children before.

Rick smiled as he leaned against the door frame and folded his arms across his chest. "Thank you," he said softly before clearing his throat. "The people in this block are my family. You aren't one of us, but they're kind. Give them some time and they'll warm up to you." Rick turned to leave Lenore to get settled.

Before Rick could leave Lenore spoke up, her hands gripping the thin mattress as she did so. "Then why did you bring me here?" she asked, because she didn't understand. The prison was large and had multiple cell blocks, so if these people were his family and she was nothing more than an outsider, why would he bring her back here?

The sheriff considered this for a moment, and he looked back towards her. "I think you can be one of us."

Lenore let him leave after that, because she was lost in her own thoughts. She had been with a couple of different groups since the Outbreak, but she had never stayed long because she had always considered herself to be a drifter. Now that she was in the prison she didn't know what she was going to do, because she felt as if she kept going by herself she wouldn't make it – not the way she had been living. There were only so many small towns she could raid on her own, and sooner or later her luck would run out. And if Rick thought she could be one of them, one of his own, then why shouldn't she stay? It was a chance, and not just surviving.

It was later that night that Lenore left her cell. It wasn't that she had a lot of personal belongings to unpack or that she hadn't spent enough time to herself, it was simply the fact she didn't know where to begin. After being on her own for so long she didn't quite remember how to insert herself back into a group of people in any type of normalcy. Nevertheless she was beginning to feel dizzy from where she had gone so long without having something to eat and willed herself to leave the vague comfort of her cell and drifted out of the block and to where she had seen food being passed out earlier.

She found Rick sitting at a table with Judith in his arms, trying to hold her and eat at the same time that she was wiggling around. Lenore glanced between the line of people getting something to eat and the father with her lip drawn between her teeth as she debated on what she should do, and after a couple of minutes of debating with herself she approached the two and hesitantly sat down on the bench alongside the man. "Let me hold her? Before everything happened I used to be pretty good with babies," she offered, silently hoping that she wasn't crossing any boundaries. He had only met her a handful of hours ago and she was asking to hold his child. Not exactly a smooth move nowadays.

Rick was surprised when Lenore sat down beside him, and his eyes widened in slight shock when she asked if she could hold Judith. This woman was practically a stranger and offering to look after his child for him while he ate. His instincts told him that he shouldn't do it simply because he didn't know that he could trust her or not yet, but he felt oddly at ease with her as if he had known her for much longer. He hesitantly handed the child to her, watching her cautiously as he did so.

She took Judith from him carefully cradling the infant against her body, pressing her face into the crook of her neck and soothingly rubbing her back as she did so. "Shh," she murmured into the child's soft curls, her breath blowing them aside gently. She wasn't Lenore's child but she felt as if the world were in her arms and felt the need to protect her at all costs, and a strange love bloomed within her as she hummed softly, her eyes half lidded as she forgot Rick for the moment.

Watching as Lenore held his child, Rick was distracted from eating. Her lips were moving and he could hear her softy singing. _"Do you still feel younger than you thought you would by now?" _the words weren't quite a lullaby, but something that vaguely reminded him of a song that had been lost when the dead began to walk and life as they knew it came to an end. _"Or darling have you started feeling old yet?" _

Lenore didn't realize she was singing because she had always sang whenever she was trying to soothe a baby. The words she hummed were never found in lullabies but instead songs she had fallen in love with from the bands that she often found herself listening to.

"She likes you," Rick said a few minutes later when he had finished eating. Lenore slowly looked up at him from where her face had been pressed into Judith's hair with a content expression on her features.

"I told you babies liked me." She smiled as she said this, and for the first time since Carl had passed it reached her eyes. Only then did she realize that the girl had fallen into a peaceful slumber and remembered that she had only asked to hold her for as long as it took Rick to finish eating, and that she needed to get some food into her before she passed out. "Do you want her?" she asked then, somewhat awkwardly as she nodded towards the child. "I don't mind to look after her, but I think I'm going to die if I don't get something to eat." She explained, to which Rick replied by holding his arms out to take Judith.

After Lenore had given Judith to her father and gone to get something to eat, Daryl joined him. The man looked back towards Lenore before looking over to his friend, who had become more of a brother to him in the recent months than the jackass he had met back in Atlanta. "What? You like her or something?"

Rick hadn't looked at Daryl, because his eyes were lingering on the raven-haired girl. "I don't know yet," there was a long pause. "She's really something."

"Yeah? We'll see about that."


	4. Chapter 4

The next morning Lenore woke up to someone shaking her arm, and before even opening her eyes she had pulled the knife out from underneath her pillow to defend herself.

"Easy there, Sunshine," Daryl said when she pulled the blade, her black hair fanned out across her pillow and her features sleepy. "It's just me." He then added to make sure she recognized his voice and didn't see him as any type of threat.

Lenore blinked several times, her blade still lifted as her vision focused on the man standing in front of her. When she saw that it was Daryl she slowly lowered it and pulled herself into an upright sitting position. "Scared the Hell out of me, Dixon," she mumbled while rubbing the sleep from her eyes. She hadn't thought to close the cell door last night but if this was going to be an everyday thing then she was going to start doing so before she ended up making someone a human voodoo doll. "What can I do for you this fine morning?" she asked him, looking over at him with an expression on her features that suggested it was too early to be asking her of anything. Daryl noticed, but didn't care.

"Get ready. We're going hunting. Meet me in the prison yard in five." The younger Dixon brother offered in explanation before turning on his heel and leaving Lenore to get ready.

She sighed as she got up from the lower bunk and went to tug her boots on from where she had slept in her jeans the night before and laced them up tightly. There was a crop top hanging loosely on her frame and she pulled on a long sleeve over it before French braiding her hair so that it wouldn't get in the way. Then she fastened her gun holster to her hip before slipping her pistol into it and buckling a belt around her hips that was equipped with knives of varying length and size before going to meet Daryl, her footsteps echoing throughout the cell block.

When Lenore stepped out of the cell block Daryl was leaning next to the door, puffing on a cigarette he had been saving for a special day. "Glad to see you're ready on time," he muttered underneath his breath before pushing away from the wall and snatching up his crossbow from where it had been leaning there beside him. He didn't check to see if she was following him or not because if she was going to be one of them then she needed to learn her place without someone having to ease her into the role. That was a luxury they didn't have anymore.

As it turned out, she was following silently behind him. Lenore had met his kind before and knew that they weren't always ones for talking so she kept her lips pursed together as they slipped out of the gates and headed into the woods. She had been expecting to see Walkers wondering around and slipping out from behind the trees, but as they made their way deeper into the brush she was continuously surprised at how long they had gone without seeing one. After an hour or so of walking she finally stopped, pulling her braid over her shoulder as she did so. "You hear that?"

Daryl had been focused on following a set of tracks the two of them had stumbled across a couple of miles back when she finally did speak, and he raised his head before turning to look back at her. The sun was filtered through the leaves of the trees overhead and casting places of both light and shadow on her soft features, and again he couldn't help but to notice that she was pretty. Those thoughts he quickly cleared from his mind. "Hear what?"

"Running water. A stream's nearby," Lenore said without missing a beat. The sound was incredibly faint but one that was unmistakable. "Which means there might be fish." She then added, making a little motion with her hand that was meant to signify a fish swimming through a stream. When Daryl didn't look impressed she looked down at her feet albeit awkwardly. Why would he bring her out her to hunt with him if he wouldn't take her suggestions into consideration? Yeah, fish didn't have as much meat on their bones as deer or rabbits, but when you were hungry you found it didn't make much of a difference as to what you ate as long as you were feed.

"I can go to the stream and see if I can catch something if you want to keep trailing the deer," she then said in attempts to shake off the awkwardness of the situation. The man hesitated for a moment before he nodded.

"Try not to get yourself killed. I'll head that way after I finish up with the deer." Daryl didn't know how she managed to survive on her own for as long as she had. He had met people on the road before who were alone and had been surviving that way but something about Lenore didn't sit right with him. It wasn't that he had something against her but she reminded him of someone who couldn't protect themselves. Someone that followed instead of leading. It must have shown on his face because she didn't respond before turning and picking her way through a thorn bush and heading in the direction of the stream. Shaking his head Daryl returned his attention to the tracks he had been following and kept at them.

It didn't take Lenore long to make her way to the stream, the water clear and sparkling in the sunlight. She looked around and strained her hearing for any signs of Walkers and finding none she began searching the bank for any type of vine and a sturdy looking stick. A few minutes later she had found both and drew a knife from her belt, tying it to the branch with the vine and making sure it was secure before carefully wading into the water – searching for fish as she did so. After wading upstream a ways she came across a small school of fish and brought her arm back – assuring that she had her footing as she did so – and then let her makeshift spear fly. The blade of her knife stuck into one of the fish.

Lenore kept at this for about an hour and made sure to keep her eyes peeled the entire time. When she finished she had about six fish, which she didn't think was bad considering the fact she had found them in a creek and gotten in touch with her inner Native American in order to catch them. Slipping off her shirt so that she was just wearing her crop top she set the fish on it before bundling it up so none of them would slip out and began making her way back. Daryl had told her that he would meet her at the stream when he was finished hunting for the deer but patience had never been her greatest virtue so she began following the impression of leaves the best that she could, her footsteps soft as she followed after the man.

She walked a handful of miles before she caught sight of him, pulling his crossbow back, the arrowshot aimed at the deer that was unaware of his presence. Lenore was about to make her way towards him when she saw a Walker coming out of the brush and moving steadily towards Daryl. Four more joined it. Dropping her shirt and the fish it held inside Lenore pulled a knife from her belt and threw it into the head of the nearest Walker. Only then did Daryl realize that they were there and he spun around, using the arrow he had been saving for the deer to take out the next Walker, and then two more as another of her blades embedded itself into the eye socket of a rotter.

Daryl looked to Lenore when the two of them had finished off the Walkers. She was doubled over and picking up the shirt she had been wearing that morning before going to join him, her eyebrows lifted as she finally met his gaze. "Thanks." He said as she put her boot to the neck of one of the biters and pulled her knife out before wiping the gore onto her jeans and slipping it back into her belt.

"Don't mention it." She murmured as she went to retrieve her other knife, her shirt full of fish bumping against her hip as she did so. "Too bad about the deer. I was hoping we could have that bad boy for supper," Lenore said more to herself than to Daryl as she examined her knife before putting it back into her belt, also.

"Looks like you got something there in your shirt we could have for supper," Daryl commented while pulling his arrows out of the Walkers he had killed.

"Six fish won't feed more than a handful of people. Just thought I would jazz up the menu," she joked without humor in her voice. Looking back towards the direction of the prison a frown weighed on her full lips and she bit them in silent thought before starting in that direction. "We should get back. The deer will be here tomorrow." Whether the deer was still alive tomorrow was the better question. Rotters ate anything that wasn't already dead.

Daryl watched as she walked away from him, because he felt as if he had somehow made a mistake. Two Walkers and a shirt full of fish wasn't anything special, but maybe he should have given her more credit than what he originally had. Quietly following after her his long strides allowed him to catch up to her in no time and he looked over at her questioningly. "Where'd you learn to throw knives like that?

Without looking at him, Lenore smiled somewhat sheepishly. "There was a circus that came Atlanta the summer before this all happened. They needed some extra help with their stage makeup and I needed the money. I stayed to watch the show afterwards." She shrugged.

"Yeah, so?"

"So the knife throwing act was my favorite, and the guy that did it happened to be really cute. I got myself acquainted."


	5. Chapter 5

Daryl had decided that he would skin the fish that Lenore had caught, because she seemed somewhat unsure about how to do so. When he asked her how she could catch the fish and not skin them she had replied with a smug look and shrug, saying that her father had thought her how to fish, but she never cared much for cleaning them. No one thinks the world is going to come to an end so no one prepares themselves for it except those people you would see on the TV who at that time seemed to be complete loons. He was cutting the head of another fish off when Rick approached him, the gloves he used for gardening stuffed neatly into his back pocket.

"Can I talk to you about Lenore?" Rick asked him with his eyebrows drawn together. The white tee shirt he was wearing was stained with dirt and Daryl wiped the sweat from his brow while he thought about what to say.

"Yeah. What 'bout her?" he asked, tossing the head of the fish over the fence as he did so.

"What happened between the two of you while you were out this morning?"

Daryl didn't question Rick. In the beginning he might have had his doubts but he had, for the most part, always been a good judge of character. He always suspected Rick to pull through and be the leader that they all were in desperate need of, and as time went on and the two of them got closer he stopped questioning the man entirely. It was dangerous in some cases, but he trusted Rick's judgment and figured he had a reason as to why he was asking him.

"We were following some tracks and after about an hour or so we came to a stop because she heard a stream. She said that we could fish and I ended up going after the deer I had been trackin' and she went to the stream. A while after that she shows up with these fish in her shirt and the next thing I know she's throwing knives into the heads of Walkers like she was born doin' it or something." Daryl said bluntly, because there wasn't any reason to lie or jazz it up. "Said she practiced throwing knives with a carnie before this all started."

Rick placed his hands on his hips and tilted his head to the side as he listened to what his friend had to say. "Well… What do you think about her?" he pressed, because when he had asked what happened between the two of them that morning he wasn't exactly looking for what they had done, but more so what kind of impression she had given Daryl. Rick might have gotten good vibes form her, but he barely knew her and she was sleeping in the cell block with his family. Anything he could know about her became his business.

Daryl hesitated for a moment, because he wasn't entirely sure what it was he wanted to say. "The girl can protect herself: She proved that, and she can provide," there was a pause because the man didn't know how to put it into words. Finally he finished skinning the last fish and as he sheathed the knife he was using he looked up towards the former sheriff. "I trust her enough to save my ass if I need it. I don't know that I trust her as one of us yet or not."

"Thank you Daryl, that's all I needed to know."

While Rick and Daryl had been talking, Lenore had found herself sitting across from Carl in his cell. She hadn't flinched when he told her his name, but instead offered him a somewhat forced smile and made a comment that it was lovely name to have. She hadn't intended on walking into his cell, but when she passed by after getting cleaned up from the fish she had walked by the cell door and noticed that he was reading comic books. Maybe if they hadn't been the same type she had read as a kid about his age or so she might have kept walking, but Batman comic books weren't something that she was going to pass up now that there was a chance she might never read one again.

"Who's your favorite villain?" Lenore asked as she flipped through a comic book that he had let her look at. The pages were somewhat faded but she didn't mind. They were soft like the pages of an old comic and brought back founder memories of a time before the world had gone to shit and became their own personal slice of Hell.

"What do you mean?" Carl asked, looking up at the woman from underneath his dad's old hat.

"Everyone has a superhero they like. Whose someone's favorite villain is says a lot about their character, though," she explained without looking up. She had this issue before and read it several times when she was younger but it didn't make much of a difference to her.

"That's weird," the teenager murmured underneath his breath. Why would someone have a favorite villain? Weren't they just around so the hero of the story would have someone to fight? Shaking his head to himself he went on reading the comic he was looking at without paying much attention to her question.

Lenore didn't mind though because after going without human contact she just felt the need to talk even if someone wasn't paying much mind to her. "I like The Joker. He's favorite villain of all I think," she expressed her opinion and Carl finally looked over at her as he waited for her to explain. "In Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Trilogy the Joker was portrayed as someone who was ahead of the curve. It wasn't the money or how many people he could kill or even meeting some personal goal of his. He wanted to make the point that people were monsters and show them that when things went bad they would turn on each other instead of banning together and doing the right thing like they believed they would." Lenore was quiet for a long while after she said this, her knees slightly spread apart and the comic hanging between them, the pages forgotten as she talked. "People are the most dangerous threat now. Yeah, the dead walk and are hungry for our flesh, but when you look at the big picture we aren't trying to help each other or coming together to stop whatever in the Hell this is. We're surviving by destroying our chance of making it."

Carl looked at her blankly before laughing. "Wow. That's deep."

Lenore smiled weakly before standing up and handing the comic back to Carl. "Thank you. Thank you very much. I'll be here all week," she teased, a soft chuckle emitting from her lips. The sound was so alien to her that she had nearly forgotten the sound of her own laughter.

It was at that point that a shadow was cast into the cell, and both Lenore and Carl looked up to see Rick leaning in the doorway. "What are the two of you doing?" he asked as he looked between them cautiously. It was obvious that Lenore was older than Carl but he had seen the way his son looked at Beth, who couldn't have been much younger than Lenore.

Lenore, who had obviously got what Rick was asking flushed and scooted away from his son before carefully nudging her way around Rick and casting him a glance that said she wouldn't touch him with a ten foot pole before retreating to her cell.

Rick watched her leave before he sat down next to his son. "What do you think of Lenore?" he asked quietly so that no one would overhear him. So far he had liked this girl even though he hadn't known her for long, but these were his people and he wasn't in charge anymore. It mattered as to what they thought about her since she was staying in their cell block.

Carl was quiet for a minute before he smiled up at his father. "She's weird, but I think I kind of like her." He answered simply.

Rick nodded in the way that only a father could. "Do you think she could be one of us?" which was really that main answer he was looking for.

Without missing a beat Carl drew in a deep breath. "I don't know how, and I don't think she does either but I think she already is."

And when Rick stood to leave, whether it was to go and talk to Lenore himself or to tend other things in the prison, Carl stood after him, tipping his hat up as he did so. "You like her don't you?" he asked the man, and while it sounded like a question the two of them knew that it was really a statement that needed to be spoken, because Rick wasn't asking for the group's opinion of her to know if could become one of them or not, because they had already decided she was. No, Rick was asking because he hadn't allowed himself to become close to anyone who was another woman, romantically or otherwise since Lori died and he needed to remind himself that it was still human to fall for this girl.


	6. Chapter 6

_It's a strange day_

When the world decided it was time to come to an end, everyone's life changed. You didn't have to worry about where next month's rent was coming from or shaving your legs so that you could wear that cute new skirt that you bought the other day. Trivial things didn't matter anymore, because the only thing that was on anyone's mind was surviving. It was us against _them. _

_The roses are in bloom_

When Daryl had found Lenore, those were things she believed to be true. She had become so concerned with surviving that she forgot what it was like to have an actual chance; something that wasn't just _making it. _The prison had given her hope that there was still a chance for her to have a normal life – as normal of a life as she possibly could considering the circumstances. Rick had also given her hope, because as time went on and she settled into life at the prison and amongst living people she and the former sheriff grew close. She had come to love everyone in their cell block, but he was different. Lenore had never been closer to death, but she had never felt more alive than she did when she was with Rick.

_But in a strange way_

And for months life was as good as it could be.

But she knew it couldn't last. You could pretend that you could find a place, a safe haven, and rebuild what had been lost. That you wouldn't need to sleep with a weapon at your side or constantly have to be on the move because nowhere was truly safe. Hell, at this point Lenore was convinced that not even Alcatraz would be safe and the infamous prison was on a fucking _island_ in the middle of the ocean who hadn't had inhabitants living on it since it shut down.

_I know somehow we're doomed_

Today it all changed.

"Rick!" Lenore's voice sounded in the sheriff's ears, but they were ringing and his vision was blurry due to the blood that clouded it. He couldn't see straight due to the wailing he had received from the Governor and it felt as if someone had taken an aluminum baseball bat to his face and treated it like a couple of teenagers treated a mailbox. "Rick! You have to get up!" he felt a pair of hands on him, one on his side and the other grabbing onto his right arm. Lenore was tugging on his limbs and Rick tried to focus on the blurry image of her. Blood stained the white tee shirt she had been wearing and her black hair was whipping violently in the wind, her eyes wide and as angry as they were frightened. "RICK! We have to go!"

Lenore continued screaming at Rick as angry tears rolled down her cheeks. Walkers were steadily filling into the prison yard because the noise and flames attracted the undead like some kind of magnet. She didn't know what she was going to do, and she didn't know who was left between the slaughter and the people who were struggling to get out alive. What she did know what that she had to get Rick onto his feet and find Carl and Judith, and at that moment it was the only thing that kept her limbs moving and her mind functioning. Again she tugged on Rick's arms, and rather sluggishly the man rose to his feet.

"Where are the kids?" Rick asked hoarsely as Lenore wrapped her arm around his waist, somehow managing to support the majority of his weight. He leaned into her and hooked his arm around her slim shoulders as she began moving up the hill, her body trembling so violently that he didn't think it was possible for her to keep her hand steady when she raised her gun. It didn't matter, though. Bits of skull and rotting brain tissue painted the pavement at she shot the Walkers that crossed their path.

"I don't know." Lenore breathed as she put three Walkers down and all but dragged Rick up the hill with her. She had been looking for Carl when she saw Rick in the field and seeing as that she saw him first, lying on the ground and becoming the picture in the dictionary for the term 'beaten within an inch of one's life', she had gone after him.

Rick felt his stomach drop and he looked around frantically, screaming his son's name as he did so. Walkers were eating people he had known and come to care for, but he didn't see them. Not really. The only thing that mattered to him was finding his children. "Carl!"

Lenore winced as Rick screamed for his son, and lifted her pistol when she saw two Walkers approaching them. Before she could pull the trigger of her gun someone had pulled the trigger of their own, because the corpses fell to the pavement moments later. In that moment she had never been more thankful for seeing Carl in his sheriff's hat in the entire time that she had known him, and a wave of relief washed over her as the boy ran to them.

That relief was brief, because a moment later Rick was speaking.

"Where's Judith?" his voice was desperate and he felt the girl beside of him tense. Carl and Lenore looked up at him with wide eyes, blue and hazel hues choking on horror.

"I-I don't know," Carl said. He looked to Lenore and was desperate for her to tell him that she had found his sister and hid her somewhere safe while she looked for the two of them, but as she slowly shook her head he could feel his world crumbling.

"Come on. We need to find her," Lenore said in a strained voice as she began moving, pulling Rick along with her. Carl moved to the other side of his father and together they managed to guide him along between the cell blocks and towards the back of the prison in silent hopes it would provide them a way out. Moments later they came across a bloody baby carrier.

Rick's fist tightened in the fabric of Lenore's shirt as a sound that was barely human tore from his throat. He released the two of them before moving away, his fingers fisting in his hair as he choked back his sobs in agony. After everything he had lost. She was the one person he should have been able to protect, and he hadn't. Now she was dead – dead and somewhere being devoured by a Walker.

Anger. Carl had been angry before, but never so angry that he felt like it was consuming every fiber of his being and drowning every ounce of humanity within him. He pumped his shotgun and took down a number of Walkers, continuing to try and shot them once he was out of ammo before he broke out into his own sobs. Then a pair of arms were around him and pulling him against a warm body, his head pressed against Lenore's chest as she held him, one of her hands moving to his cheek.

"We have to go, Carl," she said, her eyes red and swollen. Rick was standing behind her with his hand gripping her shoulder, and she looked down at his son with eyes filled to the brim with pain. His tears mixed in with the blood staining her hand and she told him again that they couldn't stay, and to help her get Rick away from the prison. The boy nodded after a moment and again they positioned themselves on each side of the older man, the three of them leaving their hopes and the prison behind.


	7. Chapter 7

Broken. It was the only thing Daryl felt. On the outside he was tough and rugged, because that was how he had to be. When he had been younger his father had abused both him and Merle, but Merle had left him behind to suffer the wrath of their father alone. He retreated into himself and while being with Rick and his people had brought out a softer side of the youngest Dixon boy, he felt bitter. They had something good going for them at the prison and some asshole who wasn't mentally adjusted went and ruined it.

As he watched the fire crackle and pop he thought back to the time Lenore had come to him in his cell with a couple of beers, vague circles beneath her eyes from the lack of sleep. He didn't talk to her often save for the occasional run they went on together and the handful of times they had gone hunting with one another. It shouldn't have surprised him when she climbed up onto the top bunk and began talking as if the two of them were friends back in high school or something, but it had. Daryl didn't know her well enough at the time to understand that she watched people more than they realized, and she read them like the books that they were.

"You know it just as much as I do," she had told him.

"Yeah, what's that Sunshine?" he should have known better to encourage her, but he was going to humor her. She had rolled over onto her stomach and handed him one of the beers that she had come across on a run she and Glenn had gone on a few weeks prior.

"People getting sick the way that they did… Good things never last, Daryl." Lenore had said to him softly, her voice completely void of emotion. He started in on his beer before telling her to elaborate, because it was obviously going to be a conversation not fit for having sober. "Bad things just happen. When I was younger I was religious. I blamed God for the bad things that happened or I would think I was having a stroke of bad luck when I wouldn't be able to find work even though a handful of horror movies were being produced and were looking for someone with my skill set," there was a sigh, and the sound of her rolling onto her back.

Daryl finished off his beer and looked up at the bars and the mattress poking through them. "What does that have to do with anything? We took care of it." He could understand why she looked at things in such a dim light, but he didn't think it entitled her to say that good things never lasted. Even after people got sick he still had hope for the prison, and he didn't want her to ruin that for him.

"It has everything to do with it. There are things we can't control. I stopped looking towards some higher power or superstition to give me all the answers. I stopped looking for people and things to blame when shit hit the fan, because we aren't designed to make it. For a while we'll prosper, but all great things must come to an end."

Daryl was quiet for a long time after she told him that, because he knew somewhere deep in his heart that what she was saying was true. She had come to him because he was the one who understood that, and telling the others wouldn't have done anything for her except made her a sore subject for anyone's dreams she was crushing. Before things had gotten bad and the dead started running around good things rarely lasted as it was, but now it wasn't a question as to whether or not it would last. Now it was a question of how long they had before everything fell through.

Lenore took his silence as all the answer that she needed before climbing off the top bunk and reluctantly moved to sit next to the man on the bottom one. She had taken his hand and squeezed it as reassuringly as she could before she had gotten up and handed him the beer she hadn't drank. "I like you Daryl. I know I don't have any right to say things like that, but I want you to be ready when things do get bad. If the world ever gets better we're going to need a Dixon boy to keep everyone in line and make all the girls swoon." Lenore smiled at him after she said this and quietly slipped out of the cell.

Daryl rubbed his hands over his face, because that was gone now. Lenore wasn't there to come to him in the middle of the night and enjoy his company in silence because they identified with one another on a level that they didn't with anyone else. She was gone and Hershel was gone, just like everyone else he had come to care about and consider to be family. The only person he had now was Beth and the girl was a lot to take in after what happened at the prison. Yeah, she had seen her father killed but they all suffered the loss of loved ones and many times they had been there to witness it. She kept talking but he wasn't listening to her. He kept replaying a voice in his head that was low and soft, feminine but with steel running through it. If Lenore had been with him she would have known that now wasn't the time for words, but instead she would sit alongside of him and share the silence.

Beth stared at Daryl, getting fed up with the fact he wasn't doing anything but instead sulking. Now wasn't the time to sit around and think about the things that had been lost! She had lost what family she had left – what real family she had left – and she wasn't sitting around depressed and silently cursing every entity known to man for what had happened. Drawing in a deep breath she tried to keep her voice steady as she stepped closer to him so that she was in his personal space. "We need to look for the others," she insisted, because everything else she had been saying he hadn't been responding to. "Maggie, Rick, Carol-" Beth began naming people off, and when she said Lenore's name Daryl looked up at her with weary eyes before slowly getting to his feet.

"Come on. We'll make better time if we start movin' now. The longer we wait the less chance we have of findin' anybody." Daryl said, wishing with every fiber in his being that he found her. In the beginning he hadn't much cared for her but there was something about her that he now realized that kept him sane, and he needed that now more than ever.


	8. Chapter 8

Lenore keeps dreaming that she's running, but she doesn't know what from. She dreams about Daryl and he's looking at her like she's something really special, and she dreams about Rick smiling at her while he rocks Judith to sleep. When she wakes up she is greeted the walls of a house that someone had lived in and knows that they're dead and wonders what things they'll never get to do with their lives. Maybe they could had cured AIDs or found the cure for cancer, or went on to become a musician that she would listen to and see in concert. When Carl first got sick she wondered the same thing about him because they told her in the beginning that unless he had a heart transplant he wouldn't make it, and there were countless nights she would lie awake in bed at night thinking about how unfair it was that her little brother wouldn't get to live. He would never get married and she would never have any nieces or nephews, and she would never see him graduate high school or take him to Comic Con like she had promised him. Not unless he had a successful heart transplant, and everyday thousands of people died waiting for an organ transplant.

Now she's thankful that he died in the beginning. He died in the comfort of knowing she was there at his bedside and that he was safe – died in the arms of all his hopes and dreams because she told him that it was taking longer than expected and that if he needed to sleep he could, and when we woke up the surgery would be over and he wouldn't be in pain anymore.

Lenore can't help but to think of the night Daryl came back to the prison after finding Merle. His eyes were red and swollen from where he had been crying and he was bitter because his brother had become one of those _things_. For the first time in Merle Dixon's life he had done something for the greater good of another human being by giving them a chance, and he was repaid by becoming a rotter. She had gone to him while everyone else was sleeping and found him lying on the bottom bunk of his bed and staring up at the mattress above him. Lenore had laid down next to him and curled herself up against him, because she knew that there wasn't anything she could say to fix things this time. Daryl had ended up crying himself to sleep and she stayed with him the whole time, and never left his side until he woke up the next morning.

Now she wouldn't leave Rick's side. His head was in her lap, the two of them piled on the couch they had shoved against the door of the house they were currently staying in. Carl had insisted that he go out looking for supplies and swore until he was blue in the face that he could handle himself, and Lenore, who loved the boy like he was her own was more than reluctant. But they needed food and other supplies, and Carl was nearly fifteen – so she had kissed him on the cheek and told him that he had two hours to look and if he wasn't back on the dot she was coming after him.

That was about an hour and a half ago, and she lazily combed her fingers through Rick's dark hair as she leaned her head back against the couch. The swelling in his face had gone down some and she had used peroxide she found in a bathroom cupboard to clean up his cuts to keep them from getting infected. So lost in her own thoughts she almost didn't realize when his eyelids began fluttering and she only snapped out of her daze when she heard a soft groan. "Rick?" she called his name softly, moving her hand so that she was cradling his cheek.

Rick slowly looked up at Lenore, blinking a few times so that her image was clear. Subconsciously he pressed his cheek into her palm more firmly as he gazed up at her and stiffly lifted his hand so that it covered her own, and he allowed his eyelids to fall shut as he basked in the closeness of her. "Carl?" he asked hoarsely, his grip on her hand tightening as he did so.

"He went out to get supplies. He'll be back soon," Lenore told him and hoped that Rick wouldn't get worked up at the idea of Carl being out there alone, but she knew it was probably in vain considering the fact he had just lost Judith. "I'll go after him if he isn't back within the next few minutes, okay? Just don't get yourself worked up. You need to rest 'cause no offense, but you look really rough, man." She tried to get the man to smile but he only replied by looking up at her once more and weakly nodding.

"Thank you," Rick said after a moment of silence had passed, and Lenore moved her hand so that she could comb her fingers through it once again. It was a simple pleasure that he hadn't had since before everything went to Hell and it felt beyond good to be able to take advantage of it in that moment. "For helping us out of there. You don't owe us-"

"Don't say that Rick. I love Carl just like you do," Lenore cut him off because she wasn't going to listen to him tell her that she didn't owe the two of them anything. If they hadn't taken her in she would have been dead by now, but it wasn't only that – not by a long shot. "I care about you, too. I haven't told you, but I-I… You're special to me, Grimes. If I lost you I don't think I could keep going." She told him in complete honesty, because after the scare of almost losing him she needed him to know that. Even if he didn't feel the same way.

But Rick did feel the same way, and when Lenore said that he struggled to sit up, and when she tried easing him back down he pushed her hand away. After a couple of minutes he was in an upright sitting position and he looked at her sincerely before lifting his hand and cupping the back of her neck. He leaned his forehead against her own and breathed in deeply for a moment. "Lenore. You know how I feel about you." He told her, his voice barely above a whisper. Licking his cracked lips he tilted his head to the side ever so slightly and the tips of his fingers dug into her pale skin as he silently urged her to kiss him. Before she could, the sound of someone clearing their throat caused them to abruptly break apart.

Carl stood there looking at the scene before him. His dad and Lenore had been about to kiss, and it reminded him of something from a romance novel that his mom used to read. Clearing his throat rather loudly the two of them broke apart and Lenore's cheeks flushed, his father looking up at him somewhat wearily. "I found more food, but I ate it." he said as he went to sit down with his back against the couch as he pretended what he saw hadn't just (almost) happened.

"Yeah, what was it?" Rick asked.

Carl smirked as he looked up at his dad. "112 ounces of pudding."

Lenore looked down for a moment before breaking into a fit of genuine, uncontrollable laughter.


End file.
